Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Genius, Super-Beauty, Supererogation

One of the shortcomings of Deontic Morality is an incapacity to accommodate Supererogatory action.  Correspondingly, a shortcoming of a concept of Beauty as a symbol of Deontic Morality is an incapacity to deal with what can be called Super-Beauty, the source of which is an elevated creative process called Genius.  Now, just as Supererogatory action is personal, and non-universalizable, the enjoyment of Super-Beauty, too, is personal, and non-universalizable.  Indeed, Kant does detect the personal component of Aesthetic experience--the recognition, in reflection, that a work is 'for-me'.  However, he attempts to universalize this component, i. e. as the "universally communicable" component of Taste.  Now, there may be cases in which it is universalizable; but there are others in which it it is strictly personal.  He, thus, cannot recognize the concatenation Genius to Super-Beauty to Supererogation.

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